Himmler’s Holy Lance:
Part 1:
‘The characteristic thing about these people
[modern-day followers of the early Germanic religion]
is that they rave about the old Germanic heroism,
about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield,
but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined.’
Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (1926)
There are probably many people who think that Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is real history. There are others who get what history they know from Indiana Jones, and when it comes to the Nazis and the occult, a man called Trevor Ravenscroft, who we shall meet eventually, has much to answer for.
The Third Reich, which Hitler proclaimed would last 1,000 years, ended in ruins in just less than 15 years. One would think, when considering the number of books, films and documentaries it has spawned over the past 70 years that what Hitler actually meant was that we’d no doubt remember the Reich for a millennium. Black SS uniforms and swastikas continue as entertainment dynamite. There is nothing in humanity’s vast lexicon of evildoing to match 1933-1945; the period remains as an inexplicable phenomena of the first order.
However, the melodramatic portrayal of the Nazi regime, due to such strategic military innovations as Blitzkrieg, and the cinematic propaganda of Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), gives new generations of viewers the impression that the Third Reich was a highly organised, tight-knit machine which, had it not been for the last massive push of D-Day, might well have seen us all speaking German today. The reverse is arguably true. Each member of that gang of inglorious bast*rds, Hitler, Himmler, Bormann, Heydrich, Eichmann, Hess, et al, occupied their own nasty individual spheres of competing influence, each man played off against the other by Hitler. Germany’s early military success was down to a combination of rapid and efficient re-armament, conscription and an audacious, traditional generation of dedicated Patrician generals and field marshals who obeyed orders. If their arrogant leader had only listened to them, he might not have ended up as a crispy corpse outside his bunker in 1945. The Fuhrer himself may have swayed the masses with his vitriolic oratory, but if we take a closer look, it becomes apparent that once he’d achieved power, he became a lazy man. He slept in late on his many retreats to his hideaway, the Berghof at Obersalzberg, where he spent many hours watching cowboy films. When German troops on the coast of Normandy saw the massive D-Day armada approaching, the High Command tried frantically to inform Hitler in Berlin, but was told by his staff that he was in bed and they didn’t dare to disturb him. Hitler was probably dreaming, something he had done ever since leaving the trenches in World War 1. Unfortunately, his charismatic messianic abilities transformed his nocturnal reveries into a waking nightmare for the world.
Much has been written and filmed about the Nazis and the occult, and even I believed a lot of it until recently. But as new research and documentation comes to light, it seems that much of the ‘Hitler possessed by demons’ literature is nonsense. He was just a very bad man. Yet there is one undeniably central character in the regime that lingers on as the very epicentre of all the stories of Nazi mysticism, and he remains as fascinating as ever; Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945).
His Swedish masseur, Felix Kersten, (1898-1960) was probably as close to the Reichsfuhrer-SS as anyone in the Reich. Yet Kersten held no misapprehensions about the nature of his client. In his memoirs, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940-1945, (1956) he gives a chilling description of the architect of the Final Solution:
‘His eyes were extraordinarily small, and the distance between them narrow, rodent-like. If you spoke to him, those eyes would never leave your face; they would rove over your countenance, fix your eyes, and in them would be an expression of waiting, watching, stealth … his ways were the ophidian ways of the coward, weak, insincere and immeasurably cruel. Himmler’s mind was not a 20th century mind. His character was medieval, feudalistic, Machiavellian, evil.’
Apart from his predilection for mass murder, many of this failed chicken farmer’s hobbies would sit easy with today’s generation of ‘New Age’ enthusiasts. He was well into the legend of Atlantis, a vegetarian who thought he was the reincarnation of Germany’s King Heinrich ‘The Fowler’ (876-936 AD) and was a dedicated believer in homeopathic and herbal medicines. He saw to it that Germany’s entire mineral water bottling and distribution industry was nationalized under the SS economic administration department. He inflicted a diet of porridge and leeks on his Aryan SS corps, and made sure that every concentration camp had a herb garden.
The Nazi view of science is, in retrospect, ridiculous. They replaced psychology with an occult gumbo which mixed a helping of the mysticism of George Gurdjieff, (1877-1949) the theosophy of Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) and all the archetypes of Nordic mythology. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was utterly discounted for one main reason – it was ‘a Jewish theory’ therefore had no value. Newtonian physics were rubbished and were substituted by a cosmic force called vril, with a nutty geological concept known as ‘the hollow earth theory’, and the central pillar of National Socialist pseudo-science, the wacky doctrine of eternal ice. The immensely popular Welteislehre (World Ice Theory), also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie (Glacial Cosmogony) was proposed by Austria’s Hans Hörbiger (1860-1931), a much-respected steam engine designer, engineer and inventor. In 1894 Hörbiger patented a new design for a blast furnace blowing engine replacing the old and easily-damaged leather flap valves. His device had a steel valve which eliminated all the drawbacks of existing valve designs. This invention led to efficient steel production and greater productivity in mining. Both the global network of gas exchange and high-pressure chemistry would have been impossible without the Hörbiger Valve, and consequently it made him a rich man, able to indulge himself in flights of fancy of a much less sound scientific nature.
Hörbiger received his World Ice Theory in a ‘vision’ in 1894. The hypothesis was that ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the ‘global ether’ (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe.
After his ‘vision’ he claimed ‘I knew that Newton had been wrong and that the sun’s gravitational pull ceases to exist at three times the distance of Neptune.’ Together with a schoolteacher and amateur astronomer, Philipp Fauth, who he met in 1898, he worked on the theory which was published as Glazial-Kosmogoniein 1912. It had millions of followers, even in the UK.
Both Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were ardent world ice supporters, and even after Hörbiger’s death in 1931, Welteislehre retained its place on the Nazis’ mad menu of rancid philosophical, racial and quasi-scientific dishes. However, there is evidence that, despite Himmler’s closeness to Hitler, and his position as the second most important Nazi in the regime, in private the Fuhrer had little time for the SS leader’s fascination with research into the ancient past, and especially with Himmler’s imposition of so much mysticism onto the SS. Himmler had been hell-bent (with some success) on transforming the Black Corps into a society of ‘Teutonic Knights’ complete with pagan rituals. Church weddings were replaced with SS wedding ceremonies, and grooms had to seek Himmler’s permission to marry. The Christening ceremony was substituted with an SS equivalent, with salt and bread among the pagan trimmings. Hitler once commented that his Reich had gone to all the trouble of shedding and destroying Christian religious mythology yet now his ‘True Heinrich’ wanted to substitute it all with more ‘nonsense’. According to Albert Speer, Hitler once joked that ‘To think someday I might be turned into an SS Saint! I would turn in my grave! We really should do our best to cover up this primitive past.’
Yet Himmler had worked long and hard building up the formidable SS, and whatever crackpot schemes he wished to develop went ahead. As the man with a card index on just about everyone and anyone who crossed his sinister path, he had the power and the facilities, and as his organisation led the field in the biggest state-sponsored robbery in history, the dispossession of millions of Jewish families, he had the funds.
Himmler’s favourite brainchild, which he founded with Herman Wirth and Richard Walther Darré on July 1, 1935 was the Ahnenerbe. It was an SS offshoot which promoted itself as a ‘Study Society for Intellectual Ancient History’. Its aim was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race. Himmler’s aim was to prove that mythological and prehistoric Nordic populations had ruled the world. This led to various Ahnenerbeexpeditions to the most unlikely places, such as Tibet and Antarctica. One of the aspects of history which fascinated Himmler involved holy relics, and one of the most important was the so-called ‘Holy Lance’, later to be dubbed by British writer Trevor Ravenscroft as ‘The Spear of Destiny’.
This is supposed to be the spear with which the Roman centurion, Longinus, pierced the side of Christ during the crucifixion. Naturally, to fit Nazi ideology, Longinus, who is not mentioned in the Bible, would be declared a German, and the weapon he used to ease Christ’s suffering on the cross would be passed from hand to hand among the high and mighty throughout history. It would become connected to the careers of German and European leaders like Frederick Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Napoleon and Otto the Great, among others. The legend has it that anyone who held possession of the ‘Holy Lance’ held power over the world.
Today Longinus is a saint, and has two days when he is remembered. October 16 in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Catholic Church, (Latin and Eastern Rites) and on October 22 in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Although his name does not appear in any works until the 4thcentury, the following passage from the Bible describes his merciful act:
King James Bible John 19:31-37:
31: The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
32: Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
33: But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
34: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
35: And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
36: For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
37: And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced
Whereas you’ll not find Longinus by name in the Bible, you can see him in the 1965 Biblical epic movie The Greatest Story Ever Told where he’s played (somewhat hilariously, as an un-named Roman soldier) by none other than John Wayne. In the movie he doesn’t have a spear, but in a Death Valley drawl utters ‘Truly this man was the Son of God …’ making this one of cinema’s most memorable moments …
PART 2: THE FUHRER GETS HIS LANCE: coming SOON.
READ THE FULL STORY IN
600 pages of mystery: published by
Constable & Robuinson/Little, Brown, UK,
Running Press Inc. in the USA.